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Happy Days Are Here Again!

One of the problems with a naming and shaming post is that it can give a skewed impression of the game.

If I, or other vocal WoW bloggers like me, spend all our time bemoaning the wastrels and wankers, why, we can give the impression the game is nothing but a playground for pricks.

Not so. Not so at all!

I took the time to piss and moan about an intentional irritant in my last post, so let’s balance the scales by showcasing the positive; a PUG group of freaking fantastic players.

Normally, I don’t run too many heroics. I get the gear I want, I run LFR, I might do a few heroics if I want to max Valor for the week. That’s it.

That’s not how I’ve been running on my Priest this week. I’ve done LFR, and I’m now chain running heroics. I’m trying to amass Justice Points to buy the Merciless Gladiator’s Investiture from Area 52 (converting JP to Honor), and I’m trying to get the healing cloth shoulders from End Time.

Chain running as a Healer in heroics is… interesting. I’m not looking at the boss or the mobs nearly as much as I’m watching what the other players are doing, and I have seen some truly bad tanks and also some good tanks. I’ve also seen the usual range of good and bad DPS.

Overall, the groups tend to be all right. Nothing special, nothing terrible, just a group of disparate individuals without communication plowing through content like it’s a nine to five job.

Get in, “Hey George, how’s it going”, “Hi Frank, the usual, can’t complain”, punch the time clock and get pulling.

No real problems.

But just as you can occasionally get the really terrible group (or terrible intentional griefer), so too can the odds flip in your favor.

This morning, I got one of those incredible runs that reminds me why I play a multiplayer game in the first place.

Random Well of Eternity, mixed group of players, feral Druid tank…

It was beautiful.

Everyone did exactly what they were supposed to, in exactly the right way, at exactly the right time.

The four other players were just… professionals. They nailed it.

From perfect mob placement to interrupting and getting out of AoE and killing adds and the hand on the Queen, to killing the portal adds that block Tyrande from shooting arrows, to dealing with waves on Mannoroth, to staying out of Fel Firestorm.

Just… flawless victory.

And it’s not the kind of thing just having one great tank does, either. I was the healer, I could clearly see every DPS was getting out of the fire, was focusing on the right targets, was going all out with cooldowns, was acting together as if they were a well-oiled machine… but coming from different servers or guilds and talking as if strangers.

It made me yearn for the days when I ran heroics as part of an all-guild group that knew each other well. That special feeling of being part of a fine tuned clan, taking on all comers and just beating them with excellence and teamwork.